Making of the Band- Syracuse style..

A quick plug for my bros band....
A local website, www.syracuse.com, is doing a series called: A Guide to The Scarlet Ending Tapes. It's kind of like a mini reality show following the band as they record their 3rd album. Each webisode is only a few minutes long, and they are trying to get as many hits as possible to keep the series going strong.

New episodes are posted every Wed., here

And if you want to see some of the older webisodes click here

A little preview:

The Scarlet Ending Tapes Trailer

USS Nimitz

We arrived in Bahrain at about 2am, even though our tickets said we would arrive at 4am..... Not sure how a regular scheduled flight can be so off, but whatev. We called our point of contact and woke him up to come get us.

From the airport, we were taken straight to a naval station (it was now 4am) where we were told we would be flown out to the USS Nimitz, at 9am. I was suddenly not bothered by the all nighter I was pulling and was literally beside myself with excitement. After a few deep breathing exercises, I decided it was best to attempt some rest during the 5hr wait, so I curled up on a few chairs.

We flew out on a C-2, which is a cargo plane used to deliver a few goods and people out to the ship. The flight was 3hrs to the carrier, which was located 80 miles south of Pakistan.


As always, pictures tell the best stories. Here I am on the ride out, looking pretty fab in my safety gear.

Here is our plane catching the hook. This was by far the craziest landing I have ever had. To keep the plane on the glide slope the engines are constantly spooling up and slowing down. It is very noisy. About 10 seconds from landing, the two load masters who are sitting in the back with us, started waving their hands in the air yelling here we go! Here we go! I am not going to lie, my heart was racing... We were facing backwards in the plane so when we landed we were pushed back into the seat. It felt like a ton of pressure, to the point where it was hard to take a breath.


Once on board we had a warm welcome in the Captains quarters and a quick safety brief about being up on the flight deck. Then we put on our life vests and helmets and were taken up on the flight deck where we stood about 20ft away from the hornets taking off and landing.

Yeah baby...

They sure don't have a long runway to take off on:



Here is a little video of a hornet landing. May I suggest that you turn your volume down. Also, sorry about some of the excess footage. I am not tech-y enough to figure out how to edit this stuff....

We were given the royal treatment on the Nimitz, everyone was excited to show us around. Their are a lot of logistics that I never thought about. For example, facing the ship in the correct direction so that the wind is right for the jets to take off and land. Also, a carrier does not travel alone and usually has a weapons supply ship in case the carrier needs protection and is sometimes accompanied by a submarine. Imagine driving that sucker right next to a food supply ship to pass everything from food to toilet paper over to the carrier.

We also visited the flight controls tower, where the Air Boss and the Mini Air Boss (no joke) keep track of the jets taking off and landing. They also alert the flight deck when jets are coming in for landing and checking with binoculars to make sure the the tension cable is adjusted properly because each jet is different. The jets land (more like fly) onto the carrier in full after burner in case the cable is missed they can go around. We saw a few missed cables at night, holy intense! The flight boss talked about the air flow over the ship and how their is an updraft a ways out from the carrier creating lift, so the tendency for the "newer" pilots is to slow down, but closer to the carrier their is a down draft, so they have to be careful not to over compensate. Crazy stuff!

Here I am trying to make a 10 degree turn while steering the carrier....I think I was fired...

The concert on the carrier was by far the largest audience with about 2,500 people. May have something to do with the whole captivity part of being on a ship. And the whole twins thing definitely did not hurt the cause. Here is the band posing after they signed autographs for 2 hours following the big show:

You may ask what the manager was doing during the autograph signing. Well, I was breaking down the equipment with the sound guy. My specialty was taking apart the drums, and I got pretty efficient by the end, ah the life of a roadie.... Other than that I chatted with the navy folks gaining some insight into being on a ship for 1 year. I spoke with fathers who wont see their newly born babies until they are 6 months old and new husbands trying to navigate their first time away from their brides...

Morale is a huge deal on the ship and a lot of effort is put into making sure everyone feels that their job is important whether it is cooking the food, cleaning the bathrooms or flying the jets. They make it a point to say that none could happen without the other. Their is also a Fun Boss on the ship that is in charge of concerts, movie nights, basketball tournaments and such. I wanted the Fun Boss t-shirt, but it didn't work out.

Here's to the people on the Nimitz who, as you read this, are still on the ship busting their ass.

Sense of humor

Okay after this post, I will seriously get back to the tour, but I really had to share this.

My brother inlaw works at Target and brought these Black Friday ads to our attention and they are freaking hilarious. The first time we watched them J and I were on the floor rolling, and I definitely had tears streaming down my face. Now I understand that what is funny to me, may not be funny to you. But I think this lady is brillant. Anytime I am feeling down, I can almost guarantee J will have these pulled up on the computer and it usually works... I hope it can give you a smile at the very least.




My favorite:






Happy Holidays!

Snow Day!!

I am not done with blogging about the tour, but I feel the need to interrupt (briefly) because today was pretty amazing. We got about 17" of snow last night and it is absolutely beautiful around these parts. J ended up having a snow day from work (which he found out after waking up at 5 and shoveling the driveway for 2 hrs in an attempt to make it to work. Fortunately he didn't seem to mind, mostly because he is crazy like that.

Right after breakfast we headed out on our favorite hike. Here are a few picts of the winter wonderland and of course of Z-dog being her crazy self..

She never stops making me laugh:

Djibouti

Upon arrival and after our marathon travel day to Djibouti, we stood in line for 2hrs to get our visas. The tiny airport had no AC, with 120 degree temps and about 90% humidity outside.

I stunk.

Djibouti was amazing. It was filled with every emotion possible and made me feel alive and the most far away from home that I have in a long time- I love that. While we were there we stayed at a joint forces base called Camp Lemonier, with mainly Marines and Navy. It was the burliest base that we stayed on during the trip. By burley I mean it had a similar feel or look to what I would imagine a concentration camp (not turned into a museum) to be like, (OBVIOUSLY without the horrors or unimaginables of an actual concentration camp, and much better living conditions. At night the base burns their waste and the whole place becomes engulfed in a smoky blanket of stinky-thick-hot garbage, literally it took a couple of washes to get the stench out of my clothes. It was a bit shocking to be there at first, and hard to fathom how anyone could stay there for extended time without spiraling into a severe depression. And with that being said, Djibouti was my favorite place visited. I guess I have never been one to make much sense......

Incase you are wondering, Djibouti (pronounced Ja-booty) is located on the Horn of Africa where the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden meet. It is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Ethiopia to the south and west, and Somalia to the southeast. The base was established in 2002 and was formerly a French military base. A few of the camp's many missions is to counter any terrorism cells that may pop up in Somalia or other surrounding regions. They also help train Somalian soldiers to help fight rebel forces and bring medical aid and other civil services into the area. I spoke with a few soldiers who volunteer at local orphanages and heard about lunch room renovations in schools and water wells that were built and maintained by the soldiers from the camp.

We stayed in CLU's container living units on base (pronounced clues.) They were literally storage containers with 2 beds and an AC unit inside.

Our humble abode inside and out










I became quite fond of our CLU and especially my comforter






Lawn ornaments

Some of the CLU's were stacked on top of each other. This is where the boys stayed:























While on base we were able to tour the H2, a marine helicopter that can actually lift its own weight.





We also played with some big guns in the ammo shop. I could barely hold this sucker:

We visited a cheetah refuge, and along with the obvious animal, we were able to check out hyenas, turtles, ostriches and gazelles. The refuge was built as a safe haven for these animals to escape poachers and I believe it was built by troops from Camp Lemonier.

Their were infact cheetahs at the cheetah refuge, however I am having some technical difficulties with the picture....

On our way to the refuge, and directly outside the camp gate we encountered some of the most intense poverty that I have ever seen. The best way to describe this is through pictures.

Most of the garbage is from Somalian refugee camps. The smell was a very strong mixture of human waste baking in the 120 degree temps, with rotting camel carcasses and trash. The life expectancy in Djibouti is not much over 40 and they say there are about 20 docs for every 100,000 people.

As you can imagine, seeing this was very intense and I definitely let a few tears fall as we drove through this wasteland/home for too many. I felt guilty for everything that I have, but also incredibly grateful. I felt disgusted by the thought of myself ever complaining about anything again, and sad to know how easily I would fall back into the comforts of my world. And that I would, in fact, mostly likely complain again.

I will leave you with a quote from my journal. "Seeing such things strips away the trivials of the day and neatly stacks all my priorities in a row."

A little managing, If you will...

Now the Dubai airport is so large that it is like a country in itself and thus deserves a post to discuss this and the crazy-ness that occured during our time there. The morning of our flight started off with a wake up call at 3:30am (which was pretty standard during our travel days...)

We arrived at the airport and while the bags were being unloaded and stacked on carts I headed into the airport to find Emirates Airline and warn them of our 8 people checking in with 45 bags. It felt like I walked a mile to find the ticket counter and I seriously think it was about a .5 mile. When we were shuffling the carts of luggage we'd have one person stay behind and one person stay where the carts were being shuffled to, while everyone ran back and forth. This took awhile in Dubai International.

We would always arrive 3-3.5 hrs before a flight and this was definitely not enough time in Dubai. Before I go any further, another key piece of info. is that we were given excess baggage vouchers from AFE for each flight in the amount of $4,000.00.

Soooo, after all our baggage was weighed, ticketed and checked in, Emirates Airline told us that we owed $14,000 in excess baggage fees (this price already included our $4,000 voucher, so $18,000 total.) Say what? Big problem....

I will spare you the logistical details of how they came to this number and just say that they charge per weight instead of per baggage. For a long moment, we thought this was where the tour was coming to an end.)

My brother went to call the travel agency, while I went to call the regional point of contact. Agency was unable to help, and POC was unreachable. (Of course the phones were another .5 mile walk.)

I know this post is getting a little lengthy so I will try to sum it up. For some reason the price was "changed" to $7,000 total or $3,000 with the travel voucher. We literally had 1 minute to decide to pay it, (and hope for reimbursement) or miss the flight and possibly screw up the rest of the tour. Of course, we payed it, and were then escorted through security and ran, and ran, and ran through that crazy airport with our escort, because we never would have found the gate, let alone made the flight without him.

Next stop- 5 hr lay over in Ethiopia, then on to Djibouti!

Fujairah with a touch of Dubai

After our time in Abu Dhabi, we loaded our gear and drove east to visit the navy folk in Fujairah. Fujairah is the only emirate located on the Gulf of Oman instead of the Persian Gulf. It is also the only mountainous emirate.

This is the Starlight Lounge, where the concert was played. After the show the hotel had a very interesting house band come in and play. Along with the house band came a bunch of prostitute regulars (probably 8-10) who spread out along the back wall scanning the room. Prostitution in a Muslim country? Quite a bit actually.

Jess playing his electic cello and Kaleena playing the melodica

The following day, before we left for an afternoon/night in Dubai, we were taken out for a cruise on the navy gunships. They showed us some high speed maneuvers and let us check out the 3 different guns on board.

The boats are used to escort different cargo ships safely in and out of port.

The guys were super nice and excited to show us around the boats.

After our boat ride we drove about an hour to Dubai (stopping at a couple roadside markets for gifts.)

Unfortunately I was not able to explore Dubai with the rest of the group. I wasn’t feeling well and knew it was too early in the trip to push myself, especially if I wanted to make it for the rest of the trip. It was a small price to pay, for what I got to experience in days to come. I did, however, see the largest building in the world (from the car):

And from the airplane: